This Plague of Days Season One (The Zombie Apocalypse Serial) Read Online Free PDF Page B

taking too much!” she yelled again.
    “You don’t get to say how much is too much, ma’am,” Theo said. “You don’t know how much I need.”
    Her voice followed them around the end of the aisle. “Selfish!”  
    Jaimie knocked a box of steel wool pads from a shelf. When the boy stooped to pick up the boxes, Theo pulled him up and urged him on.
    “I see you,” the old woman called. “I seen what you done!”
    “Go home!” Theo yelled back. He wanted to sound commanding. Instead he felt weak, yelling at a sick old woman. He wasn’t sure she was wrong. Maybe he was taking too much.
    In the next aisle, the old woman shuffled around the end, still watching. To Jaimie’s eyes, she looked less like a witch and more like a seething black mass, a swarm of black insects. Jaimie recognized the word he saw as he gazed at her. It was an ominous word that had sharp edges at the ends but was soft in the middle. He had often turned to the Ws to look at the word, to feel its danger. The word was “wraith”. That word tasted of bitter almonds. Before he closed the dictionary, he always made sure to look at a different word that made him feel safe and washed away the sour almonds: “Gesture” tasted of fresh sprouts; “pastoral” tasted the way grass looks; “cheery” was a brave, golden color that tasted of orange sorbet.  

    * * *  

    They waited in line a long time. Behind Jaimie, a scared Asian woman with bright, glassy eyes held a baby in her arms. She cooed to her child in a sing-song language Jaimie couldn’t understand, though he understood her colors. The sugary sweetness she used with the baby covered her lemony fear.
    There was only one cashier here, too. He looked like a manager. He was an older man with wispy hair that looked like it needed combing. He looked tired and harassed.  
    In front of Theo, a burly man in a big camouflage coat stood very straight. Many people spoke in an excited staccato, voices full of chaos, but the big man grinned through his red bushy beard as he watched the crowd. He was a blob of red and blue in a sea of yellow fear. It occurred to Jaimie that the man was enjoying himself.  
    The man must have felt Jaimie’s stare because he looked down at the boy for a moment before giving Theo a smile. “Never think you’d ever see anything like it, eh?”
    Theo shook his head. “Nope. Sure didn’t.”
    “I did!” the man bragged. “Saw this coming a mile away.”
    Theo gave him an encouraging nod, glad of the distraction.
    “Remember that huge power outage a few years ago? The gas pumps didn’t work. I lost everything in my freezer, including twenty pounds of moose meat I’d shot the previous fall. I didn’t know what to do with myself. I drive for a living. I couldn’t work and I hate warm beer.”
    “I remember,” Theo said. “Our power was out for three days and it was really hot. We slept in the basement and by the third night we were laying on top of the sheets as the heat settled on us. It felt like a wool blanket on a hot August night. We opened all the windows, but there wasn’t a breath of wind.”
    “Yup, no air conditioning. The power was out for eight days up where I live. I had a lot of time to sit in the dark in my underwear and think. I decided I’d be ready to take care of things myself if anything happened again, hurricane, tornado, pestilence, whatever.” His colors came far out from his body and Jaimie stepped back a little, feeling overwhelmed.
    “You know why we gotta take care of ourselves, mister? ’Cuz nobody’s coming. Like Obama said way back, we’re the crazy fools we been waiting for!” His laugh shook his belly and Theo smiled with half his mouth.  
    Jaimie hadn’t seen his father talk with other men much at all. Theo watched the stranger, his chin close to his chest but his body faced to the side, away from the big man in camouflage.
    “Things are getting kind of crazy around here. Looks like you were right to get ready. What